IoT security solutions expose the machine identity trust gap

At a glance

What this is: This is an analysis of how IoT security solutions try to close the machine identity gap as device fleets outgrow manual inventory, certificate, and lifecycle controls.

Why it matters: It matters because IoT trust failures affect NHI, IAM, and lifecycle governance together, and the same visibility and automation gaps increasingly show up across workload, agent, and human access programmes.

By the numbers:

• With a more than 40% surge in IoT, BYO mobile, and other devices being used in company networks, only an automated tool can manage the sheer volume of certificates needed to keep an organization’s network secure.
• 28.65 million new hardcoded secrets were detected in public GitHub commits in 2025 alone, a 34% year-over-year increase and the largest single-year jump ever recorded.
• 64% of valid secrets leaked in 2022 are still valid and exploitable today, proving that detection alone is not enough without automated revocation.

👉 Read Keyfactor's analysis of IoT security solutions and machine identity trust

Context

IoT security is a machine identity problem before it is a device-hardening problem. Every connected device introduces a certificate, credential, or other identity that must be issued, tracked, renewed, and revoked over time, and manual processes rarely keep pace once fleets scale across cloud, edge, and legacy environments.

The governance gap is visible in the article’s central claim: organisations can no longer assume that inventory, authentication, and lifecycle control will happen reliably by hand. For IAM, NHI, and lifecycle teams, the lesson is that device trust now depends on the same discipline used for other non-human identities, only at far larger scale.

Keyfactor’s framing is typical of the current market reality. IoT programmes usually grow device-first and governance-second, which means certificate expiry, untracked assets, and fragmented control are architectural outcomes rather than isolated mistakes.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams govern IoT device certificates at scale?

A: Security teams should govern IoT device certificates with a single lifecycle process for issuance, renewal, revocation, and retirement. The practical test is whether every device identity is visible enough to be renewed before expiry and revoked when the device leaves service. If not, certificate management has become an uptime risk as well as a security risk.

Q: Why do IoT fleets create more machine identity risk than traditional endpoints?

A: IoT fleets create more machine identity risk because devices often stay in service for years while their certificates, firmware, and trust assumptions age much faster. Fragmented visibility makes it hard to know which identities are active, retired, or misconfigured, so attackers and outages both exploit the same governance gap.

Q: What breaks when certificate management is still manual in IoT environments?

A: Manual certificate management breaks when device counts and renewal events outgrow human tracking. Expired certificates, missed revocations, and inconsistent issuance become routine, which can cause outages and leave dormant identities exploitable. At that point, PKI is no longer a control, it is a bottleneck.

Q: How do organisations reduce outage risk from expiring IoT certificates?

A: Organisations reduce outage risk by monitoring certificate lifetimes continuously, automating replacement well before expiry, and tying renewals to authoritative device inventory. That approach prevents the hidden failure mode where a device is still deployed but its trust anchor has already lapsed.

Technical breakdown

Machine identity sprawl in IoT fleets

Each IoT device needs a machine identity so it can authenticate, encrypt traffic, and prove it is a trusted endpoint. At scale, those identities are not just certificates on devices. They also include issuing CAs, renewal workflows, revocation state, and visibility into where identities live across cloud, edge, and embedded systems. When teams cannot see the full certificate estate, they cannot tell whether a device is active, retired, or already outside policy. That is why IoT identity problems turn into uptime and compliance issues, not just security findings.

Practical implication: inventory certificates and device identities as a single control plane, not as separate device and PKI records.

Why manual PKI breaks under device growth

Manual certificate management works only when the number of identities stays small and change is slow. IoT breaks both assumptions. Devices may remain deployed for years, yet credentials must be rotated, renewed, and sometimes re-issued far more frequently as environments change. Spreadsheets, siloed CA tools, and ad hoc scripts cannot sustain that churn, especially when devices are distributed across business units and infrastructure tiers. The result is predictable: missed renewals, expired certificates, and brittle remediation paths that create outages before security teams can respond.

Practical implication: automate certificate lifecycle handling end to end before expiry becomes an operational failure mode.

Crypto-agility for long-lived connected devices

IoT fleets often outlive the cryptographic assumptions they were built on. That is why crypto-agility matters: organisations need the ability to reissue certificates and update trust settings across fleets when algorithms, standards, or regulatory expectations change. This is particularly important where devices are hard to patch or remain in service for a decade or more. Without that flexibility, organisations inherit a long tail of devices that are technically online but cryptographically stale, which weakens trust even when the physical hardware still functions.

Practical implication: design IoT trust for re-issuance and algorithm change, not just for initial enrollment.

Threat narrative

Attacker objective: The attacker aims to exploit unmanaged device trust to gain persistence, move laterally, and cause outage or data exposure through apparently legitimate IoT connections.

1. Entry occurs when attackers target weak default credentials, unpatched firmware, or an untracked device identity in the IoT estate.
2. Escalation follows when fragmented visibility prevents teams from spotting expired or misconfigured certificates, allowing an attacker to move from one device to another.
3. Impact emerges as the attacker reaches internal systems, disrupts operations, or pivots into sensitive data and production workflows through trusted device channels.

Breaches seen in the wild

• 230M AWS environment compromise — 230M AWS environments compromised via exposed .env files with cloud credentials.
• Sisense breach — unauthorized GitLab access led to exfiltration of access tokens, API keys and certificates.

Read our 52 NHI Breaches Analysis report for a comprehensive view of breaches impacting Non-Human Identities including AI Agents.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

IoT security is really machine identity governance at device scale. The article is right to move the conversation away from device count alone, because the core problem is lifecycle control over certificates, issuers, and revocation state. Once fleets stretch across cloud, edge, and embedded environments, the challenge is not whether a device exists, but whether its identity is still trusted, current, and visible. Practitioners should treat IoT as part of the broader non-human identity estate.

Manual PKI assumes a pace of change that IoT no longer respects. Spreadsheets, isolated CA tooling, and ad hoc renewal processes were designed for manageable volumes and slower turnover. That assumption fails when hundreds or thousands of devices are coming online, aging out, and rekeying continuously. The implication is not merely operational burden. It is that certificate management without automation becomes an unreliable trust model.

Crypto-agility is now a governance requirement, not a future enhancement. IoT devices often remain deployed long after cryptographic assumptions shift underneath them. That creates a long-lived trust debt where the hardware remains useful but the credentialing model becomes outdated. Practitioners should recognise that fleet trust now depends on the ability to reissue and re-anchor identities as standards change.

Fragmented visibility is the failure mode that turns minor certificate issues into business disruption. If teams cannot see retired, expired, or duplicated device identities, they cannot govern them. That is why outages, compliance misses, and attacker movement all stem from the same root condition: identity state exists, but the organisation cannot govern it consistently. The control lesson is to centralise identity visibility before fleet scale makes exceptions normal.

Machine identity blast radius: the real risk is not a single compromised IoT device, but the way one unmanaged trust anchor can open multiple downstream systems that still treat it as valid. Once that assumption is in place, device trust becomes a propagation mechanism. Practitioners should evaluate every connected device as a potential path into broader operational systems.

From our research:

• With a more than 40% surge in IoT, BYO mobile, and other devices being used in company networks, only an automated tool can manage the sheer volume of certificates needed to keep an organization’s network secure, according to The State of Secrets in AppSec.
• 64% of valid secrets leaked in 2022 are still valid and exploitable today, proving that detection alone is not enough without automated revocation.
• That same lifecycle lesson applies to NHI Lifecycle Management Guide practices when device identities outlive the controls meant to retire them.

What this signals

Machine identity governance is becoming a board-relevant operations issue. When IoT devices outlive the visibility and renewal processes built around them, certificate expiry turns into production downtime rather than an isolated security event. Teams that already manage service accounts and API keys should recognise the same pattern here: trust breaks when lifecycle state is no longer authoritative.

Device fleets will continue to expose the limits of manual control. The scale signal is already visible in the wider identity market, where secrets sprawl and unmanaged credential growth are accelerating faster than human review cycles can absorb. The practical response is to converge IoT, workload, and secret governance under a common lifecycle model instead of handling each in a separate silo.

Automated visibility creates the only workable path to stable trust. As device populations grow, continuous discovery and certificate state monitoring become the difference between controlled change and latent outage. Organisations that still rely on one-off inventory projects will keep rediscovering the same problem when expired identities surface too late.

For practitioners

• Unify device and certificate inventory Build one authoritative view of every IoT device, certificate, CA, and renewal state across cloud, edge, and legacy environments. Treat unknown or expired identities as governance defects, not just technical exceptions.
• Automate certificate renewal and revocation Replace spreadsheet-based renewal handling with lifecycle automation that renews, rotates, and revokes certificates before expiry. Keep exception handling visible so operational teams can see when a device falls out of policy.
• Plan for crypto-agility across fleets Design re-issuance workflows that let you update certificate algorithms and trust settings across long-lived devices without manual rebuilds. Prioritise device classes that cannot be patched quickly or are expensive to replace.
• Align IoT governance with broader machine identity controls Map IoT devices into the same governance model used for other non-human identities so lifecycle, visibility, and revocation are managed consistently. This reduces the chance that device trust is treated as a separate security problem.

Key takeaways

• IoT security failures are primarily machine identity failures, because untracked certificates and unmanaged trust state undermine device governance at scale.
• The evidence points to a scale problem, with device growth outpacing manual PKI and making expiry, revocation, and visibility gaps routine.
• Practitioners need automated discovery, lifecycle control, and crypto-agility so device trust does not collapse as fleets and cryptographic standards evolve.

Key terms

• Machine Identity: A machine identity is the credentialed identity assigned to a non-human system so it can authenticate and communicate securely. In IoT, that identity usually depends on certificates, keys, and lifecycle state. When it is not visible or governed, the device may still work while trust quietly erodes.
• Certificate Lifecycle: Certificate lifecycle is the process of issuing, renewing, revoking, and retiring digital certificates over time. For IoT, lifecycle management matters because devices often live far longer than the trust assumptions behind their original certificates. Weak lifecycle control turns expired credentials into outage and security risks.
• Crypto-agility: Crypto-agility is the ability to change cryptographic algorithms, certificate formats, or trust settings without redesigning the whole environment. In connected device estates, it is essential because fleets can last for years while security standards change much faster. Without it, old trust assumptions remain embedded in live systems.
• Unified Inventory: A unified inventory is a single authoritative view of devices, certificates, and related identity state across the environment. It is the difference between knowing that an IoT fleet exists and knowing whether each device is active, expired, retired, or out of policy. Without it, governance becomes guesswork.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity lifecycle are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are responsible for identity security strategy or NHI governance in your organisation, it is worth exploring.

This post draws on content published by Keyfactor: IoT Security Solutions: Automated Protection in an Interconnected World. Read the original.